Psyched Perspectives: Assessing Healthcare Literacy and Access, A Conversation With Kathryn Tribble, MS

Kathryn Tribble, MS, shared her perspective from working in human resources for MUSC Community Physicians, whose mission includes expanding health care access across South Carolina, including telehealth.

Tribble linked health outcomes to social determinants of health, including transportation and housing instability, and said community-based education delivered in trusted local spaces, such as faith communities, barbershops, and salons, can help address entrenched mistrust of the health care system among historically marginalized populations.¹

Health literacy emerged as a recurring theme. Tribble argued that clinicians should not assume patients understand medical terminology or concepts such as informed consent, and described her "Supermarket Sundays" series teaching nutrition-label literacy, since serving-size listings often obscure a product's true nutrient content.² She discussed shared decision-making and the teach-back method, in which clinicians pause after giving instructions and ask patients to repeat back what they understood, particularly around medication timing: "Like saying to a patient “Take the medicine twice a day.” If you don't tell me how far apart those things need to be taken, I could take one at 9, take one at 10, and be like, 'Alright, there's my twice a day.'"

Tribble also cautioned against clinicians attributing poor outcomes to patient noncompliance without examining whether information was disseminated in an understandable way. Through her Miss St. George platform and the Wellness Warriors initiative, she has focused on childhood obesity prevention in a state with high rates of pediatric overweight and obesity, an area with documented rural-urban disparities.

Dr Clark is an outpatient psychiatrist at Prisma Health-Upstate and clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. He served on the American Psychiatric Association's Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, and he currently serves as the Diversity and Inclusion section editor and advisory board member for Psychiatric Times.

Ms Tribble is a human resources professional at MUSC Community Physicians, part of the Medical University of South Carolina.

References

1. Clare CA. Telehealth and the digital divide as a social determinant of health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Netw Model Anal Health Inform Bioinform. 2021;10(1):26.

2. Crouch E, Abshire DA, Wirth MD, et al. Rural-urban differences in overweight and obesity, physical activity, and food security among children and adolescents. Prev Chronic Dis. 2023;20:E92.